"The Japanese in videogames are as influential as the Americans are in film. They produce the best games in the world. The Japanese have huge development teams and large budgets, and they enter into a project the way Cecil B. DeMille used to approach a blockbuster film. They don't just make nice videogames. They make epic videogames. If we have a staff of 50 working on a game, they'll have over 200 people, and it works. They've brought in camera work, direction, story line - all the things that have been used in film for years. And now games are starting to influence movies: Look at The Matrix or even Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." - British game designer Peter Molyneux created Black & White, a game that's been described as "Tamagotchi for grown-ups."

Nintendo has made 115 million Game Boys - enough to arm every Japanese man, woman, and child with one of their very own.

If buzz is any indication, this Christmas the must-have console game will be Konami's Metal Gear Solid 2 (above). The cinematic shooter swept the game design awards at this year's industry expo.

Japan's $8.1 billion console game industry represents almost half of the world market.

8. DEMAND CREATION

"The Japanese product cycle is a hyper version of America's. They buy, sell, and produce much more quickly over there - it's a supercycle. Hiroshi, the fashion designer behind the Good Enough label, has a store in Osaka that's only open Wednesday through Saturday. Every Wednesday he puts new product on the shelves - usually a new T-shirt, but it could be anything, he even designs shoes for Nike - and inevitably sells out by the end of the day. The line forms two hours before the doors open because supply is strictly limited." - Shepard Fairey, creator of Obey/Giant's street-wear line, is opening a boutique in Harajuku in September.

American notebook manufacturers won't release a new model without assurances that they'll sell at least 250,000 units worldwide, but Japanese OEMs are far more experimental. For Sony, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Toshiba, Sharp, Casio, and NEC, 25,000 is a niche big enough to support a new form factor.

Japan's registration rules make it prohibitively expensive to own an automobile for much more than five years, effectively guaranteeing demand for the newest models. Used cars are exported to Southeast Asia and Europe en masse.

Santa Claus, caroling, and strings of lights are common in big-city department stores. Christmas commercialism is just part of the buildup toward the traditional gift-giving holiday: New Year's Day.

9. EROTICA

"The Japanese have a long connection with rope, going back perhaps as far as 3,000 years. Prehistoric Japanese pottery was often designed with rope. In many of the Shinto shrines, you'll see huge ropes that mark the sacred ground. Decorative tying was used to symbolize good things; for example, the gift of money at a wedding would be wrapped in an intricate cord pattern. A kimono is tied onto the body: There isn't a single hook, snap, or button. Tying is an intimate part of the culture. Medieval samurai even had a martial art, hojo jitsu, dedicated to the art of tying up their captured enemy. At the turn of the 20th century, one gentleman, Seiu Ito, started photographing women in elaborate rope bondage and single-handedly popularized a style known as shibari." - Midori, author of The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage (forthcoming from Greenery Press), was born in Kyoto.

Japanese rope bondage is spreading to the West: There are now American-based shibari Web sites and a West Coast shibari scene.

The Japanese adult entertainment industry produces 5,000 X-rated films a year. A censorship committee must screen each one for approval.

10. GAME SHOWS

"Game shows go through phases. Back in the early 1990s, humiliation was big in Japan. Trans-America Ultra Quiz, for example, required any contestant who lost to play 'the loser's game' - which basically meant doing some embarrassing or difficult stunt. One man was painted red and had to stand on a street corner yelling, 'I am a loser!' Now humiliation has come to the US with shows like Survivor and The Weakest Link. I'd say that it's become more popular here now than it ever was in Japan." - Anne Cooper-Chen wrote Games in the Global Village (Popular Press). She's spent the past year studying Asian TV.